Richard Garfield
Creator of Magic: The Gathering

We had a chat with him Monday, December 1, 1997. You can read a transcript here.

Richard Garfield began designing his own games at the age of 15--mostly roleplaying systems based on Chivalry and Sorcery and Dungeons and Dragons. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science in computer math. By then, he had expanded his game designing efforts to include board games.

As a graduate student, Garfield and a friend, Mike Davis, tried to market a board game called RoboRally, which Garfield created in 1983. In August 1991 they met with executives at Wizards of the Coast. At the time, the company did not have the resources to produce the game but agreed to schedule RoboRally for the following year. During the meeting, Garfield was asked to design a game that required minimal equipment and took 15 to 20 minutes to play.

Garfield worked on the game for 3 months; late in 1991, he presented Wizards of the Coast with the alpha version of Magic: The Gathering. The game was playtested for about 2 years and continued to evolve throughout. Meanwhile, Garfield began teaching college math, certain that a career in game design was impossible. In 1993, Magic was released to nearly overnight success and critical acclaim.